US Team Helping Pakistan with Avalanche Recovery Efforts
Satellite image shows the site hit by avalanche in Siachen, in northern Pakistan. (Photo released by Services Public Relations department on April 9, 2012)
A U.S. team of military experts arrives in Pakistan Monday to provide technical assistance in the recovery efforts for the 135 soldiers and civilians buried by a massive avalanche in mountainous Kashmir near the Indian border.
Pakistan＇s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, visited the disaster site Sunday and supervised rescue efforts on the remote 6,000-meter peak, involving helicopters, search dogs, troops, doctors and paramedics. There is no sign that anyone has survived the disaster. Military officials say no bodies have been recovered.
Handout photograph taken April 8, 2012, released by the Pakistan＇s Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) shows Pakistan＇s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani (C) visiting with other military officials near the site of avalanches where some 135 people including 124 Pakistani soldiers are missing on the Siachen Glacier mountains. (AFP Photo)
A 20-meter wall of snow plowed into the military complex in the Siachen Glacier region early Saturday.
Both Pakistan and India have military outposts in the area, known as the world＇s highest battlefield, where the inhospitable climate and avalanche-prone terrain have claimed more lives than gunfire.
The Pakistan military said 124 soldiers from the 6th Northern Light Infantry Battalion and 11 civilians were buried under the snow.
Pakistan and India have thousands of troops stationed in Kashmir, which both nations claim in full. Territorial disputes over control of the rugged region have sparked two wars between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
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